


A Sadness Runs Through Him

by CandidCanine



Category: Gorillaz
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Internalized Victim Blaming, M/M, Mental Health disorders, Murdoc being completely fucking inscrutable to Stuart, POV Second Person, Phases 1-5, Songfic, Stu really needs a fucking break, Stuart trying (and failing) to understand this mess of a man, Warnings for Abuse Apology, inspired by a song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 03:22:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17717081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CandidCanine/pseuds/CandidCanine
Summary: Stuart Pot has always had a front-row seat to the self-destruction of Murdoc Niccals.





	A Sadness Runs Through Him

**Author's Note:**

> What's this? Is this an overused and clichéd fic trope that nobody wanted and/or asked for???  
> Yes. Yes it is. *throws songfic at you and runs*
> 
> Click [here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4hewEMQUIuU) if you want to listen to the song while reading this fic!

* * *

 People are puppets held together with string 

There's a beautiful sadness that runs through him

As he asked me to pray to the God he doesn't believe in

 

  

_You're Stuart Pot, and you can't make heads or tails of the man named Murdoc Niccals._

Your story starts off with your typical weekday shift as a minimum wage store clerk in a music shop: no customers in sight for hours on end. You've done nothing but stock shelves for the day. You're dangerously close to nodding off when a group of passers-by outside the shop scatter in panic like a herd of wild gazelle.

Then it happens.

The bright glare of car headlights blinds you. There's no other warning; just a millisecond-long flash of a driver's sharklike grin behind a steering wheel. The bumper of a battered Vauxhall Astra shatters the display window of your shop, colliding painfully with your skull. Your vision fades to black.

The next thing you know, you're waking from unconsciousness with your face pressed to the pavement and both of your eyes hurting like no pain you've felt before. Slowly you sit up, finding yourself sitting in a circle of strangers gaping at you in shock. Your confused gaze lands on a car with a broken windshield whose driver side's door opens. A strange man steps out of the car and saunters toward you.

He stops right in front of you and appraises your appearance openly.

Your world slows. Your vision is muddy, your joints are screaming for reprieve, and you are missing teeth you swear you still had the last time you checked, but the man standing in front of you is wearing such a hungry look in his eyes that it grabs your full attention despite your immense pain. You assume you look about as good as you feel right now, but he's staring at you like you're a celebrity who's come to personally give him a winning lottery ticket. 

"Little Stuart," the stranger drawls, hooking an arm around your waist. "Finally back in the land of the living, I see. You look great with both of your eyes in the same color again."

He tells you that ten months had passed since you were last awake. That you were in a car accident that put you in a coma. That you were in _another_ car accident that put you out of said coma. You don't question how he had known your name or why he was so nonchalant while giving you these details because you're caught off guard by the cheeky smirk that's on his face.

"If I hadn't had your head smashed in again, who knows when you would've woken up?" he said. "Be grateful I didn't leave you a vegetable for too long."

Then he pats your back and walks away like he's expecting you to follow.

You're instantly starstruck.

You naively assume he had saved your life by waking you up, and he does nothing to dispel the notion. Instead, he takes to the farce like a newly hatched duckling takes to water, stealing your misplaced gratitude and returning it by (barely) tolerating your existence and responding to your adoration with well-timed punches to the gut. He humors you at first, likely interested in you because of your unique pair of onyx eyes and blue hair, but gets so tired of your endless babble that he tells you that his "community service" has been "rendered" and he doesn't need to "babysit someone who clearly needs to be checked in a psych ward." 

But then you sing for him in a last-ditch effort to gain back his interest, and he discovers exactly how musically talented you are.

His personality does a quick 180. He starts entertaining you again, showing you a charming side to him that you had never seen directed at you before. He subtly compliments your skill. He mentions that he had been in a few bands with keyboardists that didn't even have a fraction of the talent you have. He rambles about a band he wants to put together, which is sadly lacking a vocalist that it desperately needed.

He _had_ to have you on board his still-nonexistent band. Never mind that you had a life, a home, and a family; never mind that you had plans for the future that did not involve music in any way, shape or form. You were useful to him, so you had to go, no questions asked. His perseverance is anything if not unparalleled. Soon enough, the conniving smooth-talker convinces you to pack your bags, nod to your skeptical parents, and set off to build a future with someone who was barely an acquaintance at the time. 

It isn't completely his fault: you had chosen to go of your own accord, completely dazzled by his endless theatrics and his impenetrable personality. He is a man so confoundingly contradictory— from his blasé attitude to being threatened with bodily harm, to his intense need to be recognized for his talents by virtual strangers, to the way he seemed to simultaneously attract and repel people with his mere presence— that you, a fresh young face at twenty years old, couldn't help but idolize and desire to get close to him. Even when all signs had pointed to him being an individual more unpleasant than first meets the eye.

He dangles the promise of fame as your motivation to join his band. He thinks you want the same things he does— it's as if it never occurred to him that anyone would want otherwise. Fame and fortune is all he thinks and dreams about. You never cared much about fame, though, instead you care more about getting into the skin of the man who "saved" you; to befriend this interesting person who seemed not to know if he wanted other people to love or hate him. He craves recognition yet loathes commitment; he is aimless in direction yet focused with his goals. He seems to you like a man just tiredly going through the motions, like a puppet strung along on strings forced to dance the scripted beat of an unknown master. It's so fascinating that it made you want to take him apart and see what made him tick. 

You want to understand him.

"If you want t'get famous, don't you have to make people like you first? Maybe don't be so... you, and start trying to be... likeable?" you suggest to him hesitantly. You cringe away from his returning glare.

"The day I change my ways is the day I start praying to God. Why in hell's name would I change to ingratiate myself to some cocks who I don't even know?" he informs you. "Why make people like you when you can get them to worship you?"

When Russel and Noodle later join the band they give you the same advice: stay away from him, whatever drivel he feeds you about owning your soul shouldn't be an excuse for the daily abuse he lays on you. But you don't listen. You're unconvinced.  He was rough around the edges but you had thought that maybe a good friend would dull them and bring out his shine. So you stick by him, expecting that your loyalty would be enough to get him to stop treating you like shit.

It isn't.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 Time and again boys are raised to be men 

Impatient they start, fearful at the end 

But here was a man mourning tomorrow 

He drank, but finally drowned in his sorrow

 

 

_You're Stuart Pot, and you're starting to get tired of Murdoc Niccals._

Years have passed. And as the seasons change, so too do you hope _he_ would. You hope that time would quell that rage in him that always caused him to lash out unexpectedly at the nearest available, convenient target (which, more often than not, happens to be you). You hope that an intelligent, street-smart man like him would learn to apply his goddamn knowledge to social situations and stop pissing off the wrong people. You hope that when, finally, he had fulfilled his dream of worldwide acclaim for his music, he would sooner or later stop finding unexpected ways to drive your opinion of him down further into the dirt.  

But he doesn't change. Instead, he disappoints you. Every. Single. Time. He disappointed you when he took your girlfriend Paula away in a show of spite, he disappointed you when he got himself arrested during the time Gorillaz had broken up, he disappointed you when he chose himself, time and time again, over the band that he claimed to prize more dearly than his life. He wears his newfound fame on his sleeve; uses it as an excuse to be even more self-centered and vicious. Gorillaz' release of two record-albums, widespread global appeal, and a movie deal that almost comes to fruition hardly hampers his destructive tendencies.

Your patience wears thin. And that little spark of _something_ that you feel for him before becomes tainted, ever so slowly, by the very aspects of his personality that you were so fascinated by in the first place: his capricious attitude, his magnetic attraction to every single thing that hints at trouble, his admirable skill in provoking other people into action... his instinct to hurt people who get too close to him. There was no use being friends with someone so determined to make you their enemy.

You wanted to give up. But, like you always did, you soldiered on.

And then, eventually, you come to be aware of one simple fact.

In the years that you've known this man, you've never heard a single thing about his past or his family. Not one thing. You're straining to remember even one instance of when he had brought up the subject voluntarily. He never mentions them, and if he does, it's with a strained sort of flippancy that's obviously staged. As if he's hiding something. 

So of course, upon this observation, you wonder: Was he hiding anything about his past? Maybe it held the key to understanding  _anything_ that went on in that mind of his.

You want to find out.

He regards your burgeoning curiosity with guarded suspicion and deflects attention from his past with practiced ease. He's a steel barrier, a wall of defense mechanisms and layers of hostility and snark. When all else fails, he simply gives in to an anger so intense you shy away from asking him the right questions.

But there are cracks; he's not as thorough as he believes. After many failed attempts, it got you thinking. When he empties those liquor bottles he loves, the alcohol loosens up his tongue so much that he scarcely seems like his sober self anymore. So if sobriety prevented him from divulging any details, would his drunk self—?

You take advantage of this one evening after a Demon Days concert, when he's plastered enough to lure you into his Winnebago under the impression you were one of his fans. He begins to reminisce.

You learn about the 'nice' diner lady he knew at age nine. You learn about his mother who abandoned him at birth. You learn about his apathetic brother. You learn about his friendless, bully-ridden childhood spent cowering in empty rooms and hiding in supply closets. You learn about his violent and larger-than-life father, who he spoke of with so much fondness that it made you sick to your stomach when he recounts the 'fun' times he had spent with him.

His shared memories paint such a bleak picture of neglect that it had been no wonder to you that he subconsciously adopts the traits of his abusers, even seeking similar people out and perpetuating an endless cycle. It was no wonder that he had initially despised you; he had probably seen himself as a child when he first came across your seemingly amicable, simple and defenseless personality. You were, to him, a mirror for the easy target that he once was before he had been hardened from years of living.

 "You know how to listen," he slurs, oblivious to your realization. He stares at you with melancholic eyes and wraps his arms around you tenderly like you were a lover who he hadn't seen in years. "You're not like the other birds. Thank you, I needed this."

By the time morning comes he had seemed to have forgotten the whole night, refusing to meet your eye as you attempt and fail to strike up a conversation on the topic. You move on from trying to confront him and instead go for a more indirect approach. But still he shuts down every time you stretch your hand out to him in a show of kindness and understanding. The harder you try to draw closer to him, the more he did his best to pull away from you. 

He knows that you had cracked his mask.

But you think he appreciated your gestures, in his own way. He seeks you out instinctively when he's in one of his fouler moods. He touches you often enough, gently enough, that it gives you the urge to wrap him in a consoling embrace. He gives an infinitesimal smile at you whenever you laugh at his jokes or praise his keen attention to detail in music. It's such a nice change of pace from your normally volatile dynamic that you seek it out like a crazed addict. 

To you, everything was different now,you knew why he acted the way he did and you knew what was responsible for his nature, _you could understand him_ _now,_ and maybe you could steer him into getting the help he needed. But everything was also the same, because he still treated you the way he had always treated you, he made no effort whatsoever to acknowledge that there might've been anything that he needed help  _for._ It was okay, it was alright. He clearly needed time and a bit of prodding. You'll be there with him, as his friend, and maybe you could work things out...

If Noodle didn't die in the aftermath of El Mañana, and you didn't remember who had angrily insisted that she did the shoot.

He did not show remorse at the news.

You feel your faith in the man finally shatter into a million pieces.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 He could not break surface tension 

He looked in the wrong place for redemption 

Don't look at me with those eyes 

I tried to unheave the ties 

 

 

 _You're Stuart Pot, and Murdoc Niccals is someone you don't know anymore_.

Russel had disappeared off the face of the Earth mere weeks after Noodle's death. You know why he had gone so quickly— being constantly reminded of the death of someone who was like a daughter to him would not have been a good idea. It was alright though; you didn't mind him leaving since you follow hot on his heels. There's no use in staying in a band with most of its members gone, and you would sooner grow your brown hair back than stay and be reminded of what had happened to Noodle. So you set off on a journey, a retreat of sorts, to clear your head of the fiasco that was Demon Days. Goodness knows you deserved it.

As for  _him,_ you have no intention of knowing. He had left before you could even hold a funeral for Noodle. You don't want anything to do with the man and would be content to never hear from him again for the rest of your life. It was all ancient history to you now. 

Until it wasn't.

One moment you're basking in the view of Beirut, the next moment you wake up groggy, lightheaded, and shrouded in complete darkness.  You emerge from the dark confines of a suitcase, oxygen-deprived and seasick, and are graced by the baffling sight of a plastic island painted in an eye-searing color of hot pink. A terrifyingly familiar face smirks at you, with an expression that you instantly read as a mixture of derangement and malice. The expression on his face is so foreign and disturbing that you feel a shiver crawl down your spine.

"Welcome to Plastic Beach," he greets you, grabbing a fistful of your shirt collar and pulling you down to his eye level. You didn't feel very welcome.

What followed were some of the worst months of your life. He locks you in a tiny bedroom beneath the ocean, with no way to entertain yourself save for learning the sheet music he threw at you and forced you to practice. There's a keyboard in the room, a bed with warm blankets, and so much junk strewn on the floor, but nothing else that seemed to indicate that he expended more than the bare minimum to prepare this prison as a temporary home for you.

You've never gone so many days without your painkillers, but this time you go weeks without your precious meds dampening your experience of this nightmare-turned-reality. Your insomnia worsens by the return of your migraines, your rare sleeps are plagued by nightmares. But why would you want to sleep, anyway, with the ever-present eye of a monstrous cetacean lurking outside the porthole of your room? So you cease sleeping. There's no meaning to your nights and days, anyway, save for when  _he_ occasionally yanks you out of your room to record the vocals for his new songs or force-feeds you after you attempt a hunger strike to protest your living conditions. He sends that hunk of metal that was an insult to Noodle's memory every damn time he had to fetch you from the bowels of Plastic Beach, and the instant you hear her metal hand knocking on the door you automatically freeze up in fearful anticipation.

He becomes more cruel. So very, very, cruel. Whereas before, he had chosen to hurt you with offhand remarks on your intelligence and personality, now, his insults have become barbed with the real intention to humiliate and degrade you. If before, his beatings were done with little to no ill intent (if not done with the goal of amusing himself or others), now, his strikes and punches are heavily laced with meaning, as if screaming that  _this was all your fault, you caused him to hit you like this, why hadn't you stayed away?_

You bleed more from the sharpness of his insults than the bluntness of his fist. He's not just a barrier anymore, he was a fortress, completely fucking impenetrable and armed to the teeth with a brusque and vicious attitude tailor-made to drive other people off. You can't even begin to place how he was doing mentally anymore; every single time you talk to him guarantees you of the surety that he had gone off the deep end and was left to fester in the confines of his ruined mind.

So you try to distance yourself from him for your own protection. You shut yourself off to him, you try to allow yourself to feel your own resentment and anger that had been simmering quietly beneath the surface, you try to refuse even the tiniest urge to empathize with him whenever he looked at you with those _goddamn_ eyes that were still filled with a quiet melancholy. You focus on delivering the vocals for his songs, hoping that with the completion of the album, he would grant you your freedom and you could put the whole ordeal behind you.

But then you read, really read, the lyrics to "On Melancholy Hill", and you're left awestruck for the first time by anything he's written since your reunion. You get your hands on "To Binge", and you're left staggering by the loneliness practically wafting from the song. He shows you "Broken", and its imagery was so telling that it left you contemplating everything you knew about the man.

He wrote like a lost man who fell in love and was bitterly trying to change for a person who was no longer around to appreciate it.

You don't know what to feel. Did he fall for someone while the band was broken up? Maybe he fell in love with a(n) (un)lucky person after you and Russel  had left him. Maybe that was why he had become so unfailingly cruel. The mystery lingers at the back of your mind. You begin to take your assumptions as fact. You start resenting this mystery person, hating them, even, for breaking his heart like this and leaving you to be the one to pick up the pieces. You keep silent, but your suspicions grow with each passing day until you couldn't take the agony of not knowing anymore.

You confront him and steel yourself for a beating by asking him point blank who it was for. At first he reacts the way you expect him to, by punishing you with imprints of bruises all over your body, but he relents one night after you had steadily chipped away at his defenses by sheer persistence.

"Tell me the fucking truth, because I deserve to know," you yell at him in frustration. "because  _I'm_ singing  _your_  damnlove songs. Last time. Are these songs about someone, and are they the reason you've gone off your rocker!?"

"Sod it," he curses after downing a whole bottle of rum and gripping your neck. "I don't care anymore."

He kisses you.

He tastes of tobacco ash and alcohol and spice, but you don't pay attention to this because  _holy fuck,_ he's kissing you. He's kissing you and you don't know how or why or what had prompted him to do this. Your mind goes blank. You freeze up like a deer in headlights but he doesn't even notice; he keeps his lips pressed to yours until he loosens his grip after a mere five seconds. But the damage is done, five seconds is enough to upend your entire world view. He watches you stutter uselessly while reaching out to caress your face, then says to you with an indecipherable look on his face:

"It's not that hard to guess, faceache. Yes, it's about someone. I wrote love songs about someone I used to know. See, I didn't value his friendship enough and took it for granted. I used him for years." 

His thumb grazes your cheek. "This pillock had insisted on getting too close to me, even after I tried aaaaaaall the ways I could think of to get him to leave me alone. But he never let up. So I got too comfortable. Started to enjoy having his annoying face around me. When I started to...  _feel_ things for him, I couldn't take it. I locked those feelings right up like some hormonal bird does with her private diary. So when I disappointed him by committing the biggest fucking mistake of my life, I panicked and left him. Do you understand?"

You do.

And you're petrified.

So you run away from him, and barricade yourself in your room for so long that he had to have Cyborg Noodle drag you out.

You never bring up the incident and he obliges you by sharing your silence. The two of you never speak of it again. He starts treating you with more care, letting you roam around the island freely now, but he also avoids you like you've got an incurable disease. The sudden change makes you so conflicted that you almost prefer his old self. You aren't used to such a quiet side of him; aren't used to going entire days without being called down to his studio. At least he had spoken to you and you could guess what he was feeling, but now you don't get the chance. You barely even see him anymore.

You're confused, your heart was in shambles, but you were forced to drop the thought because you both soon find out that Noodle was alive, she's at Plastic Beach and back from the dead; Russel was back, he'd arrived at Plastic Beach too and he was fucking enormous for no reason. They are alive and you are happy; so, so, happy that your friends are back after all these years. They both hug you and laugh and ruffle your hair playfully, and you are overjoyed. Your worries are banished from your mind.

A lot of things happen and all of you leave Plastic Beach together. Almost like a family. For the first time, you're unbothered by the kiss that had overshadowed your mind for weeks.

You think that maybe this time if the four of you would be able to last some time together. You think that Gorillaz might have a bright future ahead. You think that a few days back in the company of other humans might be enough to clear yourhead, maybe help you understand what exactly it was you did to make  _him_ fall for you and why exactly you weren't so opposed to that idea.

But you hadn't noticed a certain someone shattering your hopeful reverie, ripping himself away from the group, until he's already vanished as quickly and as quietly as waves rolling over a plastic beach.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

Turn back the time that drew him  

But he couldn't be saved 

A sadness runs through him 

Through him 

 

 

_You're Stuart Pot, and Murdoc Niccals had once again crashed into your life like a car into a music shop._

He shows up at your steps after nearly a half a decade has passed. He had seemed more subdued. Not quieter, not more thoughtful, and certainly not less vulgar, but more...stable. You don't know if the years he had spent by himself had been enough to unspool the massive tangle of issues swimming around in his head, but his new demeanor had been a complete 180 from what you were used to. You were stunned into silence when he asked you— instead of ordered you— to work with him on a new Gorillaz album. He gives you a slight smile as he waits for your reply, as if he had already anticipated the "no" that threatened to slide past your lips.

He immediately lights up when you accept his request instead.

You gather the rest of the band and quickly set to work, all the time observing him as he interacted with you and the others. You felt like you had time travelled back to the early 2000s again with you, him, Noodle, and Russel all in one house, together again, and working on new songs to unveil to a fanbase that hasn't seen you in years. So many things had changed, and others had not: you had gotten a lot older, a little more tired, but your passion for music remains the same. He's no different from you in that aspect. He's genuinely happy to work on creating new music for the band again, vibrating with the energy and enthusiasm of someone half his age.

You debut your album to overjoyed multitudes. The world may have kept turning after Gorillaz had gone on another hiatus, but it certainly did not miss you any less because of it. The four of you soon announce a global tour, formally kicking off the Humanz era. Your fans go wild.

The tour reignites your love of your profession. It's always been intoxicating to you and always will be. You own the stages of your concert venues with an aura that your twenty-year-old self would've envied, filling stadiums with the hypnotic sound of your voice. Your body slips into the beat with calculated grace aimed at a euphoric crowd; drives them into near anarchy. You lure entire audiences into a trance and listen to them sing the lyrics back to you. You're the ringmaster, the showstopper, the conductor of this beautiful orchestra. You're the frontman of your band, and you are  _born_ for this role. 

 _He's_ always at the corner of your eye, plucking away at his bass as he watches you charm your fans with each and every song you sing. He doesn't attempt to hog the stage like he used to and instead goes for a more muted presence; a far cry from his old self.

Occasionally he directs a smile at you with a strange mind-numbing tenderness that whispered of an unplanned confession, a hand wrapped around the back of your neck, and the feeling of dry, chapped lips on your own. Whenever that happens, you zone right the fuck out and almost miss a verse of the song you're singing. Then the moment is gone; he's wearing another, more devilish smirk and directing his attention elsewhere.

He still hasn't brought up that night.

You wonder if you would ever get any closure on the subject. You two continue to dance around each other like you're both threading on eggshells; you attend interviews with him and pretend you're _fine,_ you shoot music videos together with the band and think you're  _fine,_ Noodle and Russel start noticing and you both gesture that you're  _fucking fine._

But no, you're not fine, you're both lying to everyone, each other, and yourselves without saying a single word. You're frustrated and you know  _he's_ frustrated that you both can't seem to restore your relationship back to something that even resembles the casual (albeit abusive) one that you had in the past. But what can you do about it? You're terrified and he is in denial. So you choose the next best thing to addressing an elephant in the room: 

Addressing a slightly smaller elephant in the room.

"What happened to you after El Mañana? After Noodle almost died." you inquire one day, taking the chance to bring up the topic when you had both been left alone in the house.  

 He raises an eyebrow at you. "What a completely tasteful and subtle segue to a delicate topic, Dents."

"Just answer the question."

"I left."

 _...when I disappointed him by committing the biggest fucking mistake of my life, I panicked and left him,_ the Murdoc in your memory echoes back to you. You banish him from your mind.

"I know you left," you enunciate slowly, knowing he was being deliberately difficult. "But why did you leave? You didn't even stick around for her funeral. You just up an' went, like you didn't even care."

His eye twitches. "I did care. Just didn't think it was worth sticking around when there's more useful things I could be doing."

"If you did, you woulda manned up and stayed. Instead you left like a coward."

"Shut up," he says with restrained anger. "Don't start spouting off nonsense. You don't know shit 'bout what I went through."

"You didn't even cry," you accuse. "Even when you were the one who made Noodle do it. Even when those people in the helicopters came after her because of you. I saw you hours before you left, you didn't even look sorry, you didn't even want to talk to Russel an' me—"

"SHUT UP!" he yells so loudly that you're stunned into silence. "Just fucking shut your gob before I do it for you."

He exhales, then, as if bracing himself for something, starts slowly. "I get it. I fucking get it. I was a prick for leaving you and Russel like that. But I didn't mean for anything to happen to Noodle. I didn't think that she'd be in any danger. I've done a lot of idiotic things, got in hot water with all kinds of unsavory blokes, but I'd never had someone I cared for killed because of me. I've never fucked up to that extent."

"Still doesn't explain why you bolted."

"I'm getting to that, D. When she died, I was in shock. I tried to wrap my mind around the idea. But I couldn't accept it. I couldn't attend her funeral knowing we hadn't even found her body from wherever the fuck she died. I tried everything I could to bring her back. Or even know where her soul was. Even went to hell, y'know? But I found nothing." There was a faraway look in his eyes. "I think that's what made me go mad. Just the thought of not knowing. Then couple that with you an' Russel both hating my guts and our band breaking up again. It just broke me. I'd just started warming up to the idea of having you all around, after our band broke up the first time. And just like that, I was alone. Again. Like I was back in that sodding prison in sodding Mexico—"

He stops abruptly.

"I've always known I've got a few screws loose," he continues tiredly. "I know I'm sick. But that doesn't mean I'm heartless. I'd missed Noodle terribly and if there was a way for me to turn back time and stop her from ever doing that damn shoot, I would. But it happened. It's done. And that's the biggest regret of my life."

"Are there... any other things you regret?" you ask hesitantly. The sensation of a gentle kiss tingles at the back of your mind. 

He stares at you like he's seeing the exact same memories play out in his head.

"No. Maybe. I think I regret being a complete git to you for so many years." he paused. "I'm going to try to change. Put my ways behind me. For the sake of our... friendship."

Silence.

"Okay."

You don't know if his answer was the one you wanted. Or even what you asked for.

But you want to believe in him.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 Don't look at me with those eyes 

I tried to unheave the ties 

Turn back the time that drew him 

But he couldn't be saved 

No he couldn't be saved

 

 

 _You're Stuart Pot, and you're reeling after the absence of Murdoc Niccals_. 

He's gone. You don't know what to think anymore. He got himself arrested _again_ for drug possession. He claims he's innocent, but no one believes him. You don't know how long he's going to stay in jail this time but it'll likely be for months judging by his track record.

He's been complaining to his fans on social media for months now, weaving an incredibly dubious sob story that included, of all things, the very same bar that you shot Strobelite in, a mysterious man named El Mierda, a business card with a fake address, and a drug syndicate with ties to the Mexican mafia. Oh, and being framed for his crimes, of course.

You're just completely confused by his tale. Who the hell was El Mierda? Who was he trying to fool with this charade? Didn't he promise you he would change? Why the fuck would he do this to you again???

You wonder when you'd get sick of it. You wonder if you'd ever get sick of the cycle of getting your hopes up by empty promises, then being inevitably disappointed when he continues further down the path of his own self-destruction. Why the man insists on walking that path when he had people who cared about him constantly trying to veer him in the right direction, you don't know.

All you know is that he had let you down again. You want to berate yourself for being well aware of his faults, but you know that no amount of mental self-flagellation is enough to keep you away from the man. His allure had always been irresistible to you, and as soon as he was out you'd be attracted to him like a moth to a flame.

You're just as much of a fool as he says you are.

Your heart clenched. No, fuck what he says. Whether he stays in jail for a hundred years or a hundred days, you will not let his absence or presence in your life dictate how you lived your life. You've wasted over half of your life hoping that this unapologetic man would change his ways when he's proven, time and time again, that he would never be capable of doing that. It was best for you to give up.

So you did.

And to show to the world that you were turning over a new leaf, you announce the arrival of a new album made without the input of your band's bassist. To your glee, the album was met with resounding success from both critics and fans alike, further solidifying the fact that you hadn't needed him at all. You  _are_ perfectly capable of leading a project by yourself without him around. You  _aren't_ a useless knob who just sat around waiting for someone else to start the job for you. Russel, Noodle and Ace were the only people you need.

If only the mere suggestion of his presence wasn't enough to trip you up. If only the mere hint of his name wasn't enough to trigger you to overreact and defend yourself a little too aggressively.

You see his tweets to fans urging them to mobilize for his freedom. You tell your fans to stop contacting him.

You know he thinks you're short a bassist. You replace him with another (arguably better) one.

You find out he's started a popular movement while you're on tour. You turn your eyes away from the ever-present mob of fans holding up signs reading _"Where is he?"_ and _"Free him!"_ in your concerts.

You take care to mention as frequently as possible how much better off you were without the presence of a toxic individual poisoning every facet of your life. You show to the world that you're fine by hanging out with the rest of the band in public. You try to ignore that feeling in your chest when he claims to the world that he's doing well in prison because you know otherwise; his body is painted in hues of black and blue and his eyes look like it's devoid of the soul it once had.

Your whole life has been set back on track. With him in prison, there was no reason anymore to think about your unresolved relationship. 

You shouldn't miss him.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

A sadness runs through him

 

 

But you do miss him.

You think of his absence when you skate to the beat of Humility.

You think of his impact in your life when you sing Kansas.

You think of his regrets when you listen to the somber melody of Fire Flies.

You think of his sad eyes when you write the lyrics to Souk Eye.

Your entire album is the result of your unspoken longing to mend an irreparable relationship.

_You're Stuart Pot, and for some strange, unfathomable reason, you want Murdoc Niccals next to you despite the man he was._

**Author's Note:**

> I have a 2doc blog now! I'm [2dorkandmrpickles](http://2dorkandmrpickles.tumblr.com) on Tumblr. Drop by if you want to chat :D
> 
> ((Talk to me pretty pls! I'm a fandom newbie looking for friends to cry about Gorillaz with. This lonesome turtle doesn't bite))


End file.
